BENGALURU: Starting today, Jeanne Rozario is trying out a two-month ‘social media detox’. For someone whose job involves staying glued to the latest trends and updating her client’s online presence, Rozario knows this will be difficult but is determined to stick to her plan. Reason? The 22-year-old writer at a digital agency is terrified of coming across spoilers from the latest season of Game Of Thrones (GoT). “It’s instinctive for me to start my day by checking Facebook or Instagram. But in the previous seasons, a major character’s death was ‘spoiled’ for me and I don’t want that to happen again,” she says.
Rozario isn’t the only one. According to internal data by Instagram, Bengaluru ranks third, after Mumbai and Delhi, in the list of Indian cities most excited about the show. As the first episode of the show’s finale releases today, CE spoke to some GoT fans from the city about the crazy things they’ve done for the show.
It’s not unusual for fans to go any length or distance to show their love for the medieval fantasy series. Take the example of Aakarsh T, who travelled 145.5km every weekend, just to maintain the tradition of watching the show with his friends. When Tandon was pursuing his undergrad in Bengaluru, he became friends with fellow fans of the show. The group would discuss every detail of the show after watching it together. “I went back to Mysuru when I finished my undergrad in 2016. But to keep up with the tradition, I’d go to Bengaluru over the weekends and watch the new episode with my friends. There was a quote in season five, which went, ‘Gather the elders and let’s talk’. We modified this to ‘Gather the elders and let’s watch’,” he recalls.
Rising early
Like Rozario, Jay Sanghvi too tried his best to avoid spoilers. College began at 8.30am but there was always the risk of someone having an intense discussion about the latest happenings. Sanghvi then took to waking up at the crack of dawn to catch the latest episode before he went to college. “I would spoil things for my friends, just for kicks. Soon, everyone started waking up early and we’d all turn up in college having already caught up with the episode. We would bunk class to discuss the episode in detail over chai,” he shares.
Bingeing out
In 2017, Rathnaraj Jain fell sick with a bad bout of the flu and finally started the show. “I had initially taken three days to recover but once I started the show, there was no going back. I extended my leave by three more days and finished the series,” he says, adding that sometimes, he watched the show for 12 hours a day.
Ask any GoT fan what the worst part of being in this fandom would be and they’d tell you the wait for a new season can often be excruciating. But Kundan Sethi would often spend the one year between seasons reading fan-fiction spin offs or theories about the show. “It may not come true but it’s still interesting to see the many directions the show could take,” he explains.
Sethi’s love for the show took some time to take off, with him watching the first episode of season one multiple times before he ‘hooked’. “I had my preparatory exams going on that time but I spent more time watching the show than studying,” he says. Since 2014, Sethi has gone on to influence 12 more friends into becoming fans of the show, and has watched every episode of the show at least three times. “Every time a new season is coming out, I start a marathon binge-watching session and watch every episode leading up to the newest one. I catch so many things I missed out before,” he adds.
Aakarsh followed a similar routine and over the past three weeks, he finished watching all seasons again, clocking in about three hours daily after work. He can now recall names of almost all characters, minor ones included, and can even remember dialogues verbatim. “Some might call this a disorder but for me, it’s just my passion. I’m excited about the finale season but it also feels like the end of an era since the show has been such a big part of my life these past years,” he says.